garycase

I did the same for several years -- still have 6 400-disc folders full of DVDs. But as the hard drives got large enough, it was FAR more convenient, and less expensive, to simply copy everything to a backup disk before copying it to the servers. A TB of disk space costs ~ $50 (or less) => but can hold over 200 DVDs. So if you paid $0.25/blank DVD, you'd be spending the same amount -- and you'd still have to burn all the DVDs. I simply keep my current backup disk in a caddy; copy everything I'm adding to the server to the backup disk; and when the disk gets full, simpy put it in a case (I use WiebeTech DriveBoxes [ http://www.officemax.com/office-supplies/safes/security-fire-safes/product-prod5014223?cm_mmc=Googlepla-_-Office%20Supplies-_-Safes-_-Security%20Fire%20Safes&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=23619602 ]; and pop in the next backup disk.

SMART parameter 187 reports the # of read errors that could not be corrected via the ECC code. Your report still shows a good value for this (99), so I'd just consider it an anomaly and not worry about it. Seagate reports a lot of parameters that other drive manufacturer's don't show ... and most of those extra ones are of little-to-no utility for really analyzing a drive's status. [but they cause a lot of worry ] r.e. being a champion for backup => I certainly believe in backups. My point r.e. these drives is that you've had issues with them; they still look okay; but your "confidence" level is probably low. Using these for backups reduces the number of backup drives you need to buy if you don't already have enough. I know many folks don't bother to backup their arrays -- that's simply a personal choice. I tell all my friends/clients a very simple rule: Always assume your system is going to have a catastrophic failure at midnight => if there's anything you're going to be upset about losing when that happens, back it up; if not; don't worry about it.

Same comment as above => SMART looks okay, but it's a judgment call whether or not to return them to service. Looks like another good candidate for your backup pool

The drive looks fine -- in fact the "pending" sectors tested okay, so SMART didn't even reallocate them (you still have 0 reallocated sectors). It's also not all that old a drive -- at least not in terms of power-on hours. It's got less than 15,000 POH ... I've got drives in my array with over 40,000 hours. As you noted, it's a judgment call whether or not to use them. Personally, I'd just use it for a backup drive. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of my backup drives are repurposed drives like that -- either had minor issues (like your drive), or were replaced with larger drives.

Anyone who complains about 6.9c/kWh electric rates is not paying attention to the world !!!

Wow -- can I import some of your power ?? !! 8) I'm outside San Antonio, and our rate is nearly double that !!

Any of them will work, but as I just noted, I'd go with the 360w unit. Assume your idle power draw is 30 watts -- even lower than I assumed above (I think 35w is more realistic). That would be a 10% draw on a 300w unit; or a 8.3% draw on a 360w unit. Both of these are well below the 20% certification level -- so it's reasonable to assume that both units will be operating at 5-10% lower efficiency than they're rated at. Just for grins, assume the 300w unit is "only" 5% less efficient than it's rated, but the 360w unit is 10% less efficient (NOT at all likely ... if anything, a Gold rated PSU is likely to drop LESS than a Bronze rated unit). If that was, however, the case, note that a 10% drop from 87% (Gold) is exactly the same efficiency as a 5% drop from 82% (Bronze) => so both PSU's would be operating at 77% efficiency. What's MORE likely is that they'd both drop by about the same % efficiency ... which means the 360w Gold certified unit would be 5% more efficient than the 300w unit.

Your system is not likely to get down as low as 30w. My atom-based system idles at 20 watts; but the motherboard/CPU you have, coupled with the case fans and heatsink fan is more likely to draw in the 35-40 watt range. The maximum doesn't really matter -- you'll very rarely draw that (only during high CPU utilization like a transcoding task). So assume you idle at 35 watts and buy the Seasonic 360w unit. You'd be drawing ~ 10% of the rated power. It's an 80+ Gold unit, which means it's 87% efficient at a 20% load. I'd expect efficiency to drop by 5-10% ... so for illustrative purposes assume it drops to 80%. At 80% efficiency, drawing a 35w load, that means you'd be drawing 44w from the A/C supply ... a "waste" of 9 watts. HOWEVER, even if you were operating at the "80+ Gold" efficiency (87%), you'd still drawing 40 watts from the A/C supply -- so the lowered efficiency is really only "costing" you 4 watts of power. 4 watts wasted 24/7 is 35kwh per year wasted ... not sure where you're at, but in the US with an average cost of ~ $0.12/kwh that's $4.20/year. Clearly not a big deal. The reason a lot of folks use larger supplies is twofold: (a) the PSU manufacturers concentrate on their higher-end, higher-capacity units, so the "better" units are all higher-wattage; and (b) you DO need a PSU with enough capacity to handle the start-up current in system with a lot of drives. I think the 360w Seasonic is a good choice => they do make a 300w 80+ Bronze unit, but the Bronze certification level is 5% lower efficiency than Gold at 20% load ... so I think you're better off with the 360w unit.

That 360w 80+ Gold Seasonic would be an excellent choice. DO NOT scrimp on your power supply -- get a quality unit. Seasonic is excellent ... you can probably guess my thoughts on the quality of a $13 unit

Here's a 300w 80+ certified Seasonic in a standard ATX form factor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151085

No, you're not going to come anywhere near 50% utilization with that build. I'd guess your typical draw will be in the 60 watt range ... perhaps even lower ... ramping up to perhaps 75 watts with all drives spun up and running a parity check. With only 3 WD Reds, your total drive current is going to be ~ 15 watts ... so I'm assuming about 60 watts for motherboard/CPU/fans -- difficult to say for sure, that should be about right. If you're running high-CPU utilization transcoding, it will be more ... the CPU alone can draw up to 55w, but even at that you're not going to come anywhere near 50% of a 400w supply (as you've listed)> Note that 80+ certified supplies have to meet the specified efficiency at 20%, 50%, and 100%. Below 20% the efficiency often drops rapidly. So what you really want is to run at ~ 20% so you're getting maximum efficiency. For a 3-drive system, a 300w 80+ PSU would be a very good choice.

The report looks good except I don't like the High Fly Write value. But that's not unusual for Seagate drives, so it's probably fine.

Both drives look good.

It could simply be the way Seagate reports SMART parameters for that model -- different manufacturers report these differently; and sometimes it's even different on different models. But yes, I'd do a SMART report periodically and see if that value degrades further (gets smaller).

They look fine. The first one has a relatively low value for the ECC_Recovered parameter, but that's an informational value, not a critical SMART parameter. But the key values are all okay; and neither has any reallocated sectors ... so you're in good shape.

Well, the rebuild is going at a VERY good rate, so all's working well now. But a single pre-clear should NOT have caused the array to run notably slower than normal. I've done two pre-clears at once with my Atom and still been able to use the array at normal speeds. One of life's little mysteries I suppose. See if your next pre-clear has the same issue ... but in any event, they're such a rare activity that I wouldn't worry about it as long as everything else is working well.

Unless you're using a very slow CPU [e.g. a single-core Atom or a very old Pentium] this should not be the case. And in general the onboard SATA ports are the best ones to use. So ... check the BIOS to confirm you have the SATA mode set to AHCI.

It does that when run under v5 => if you Start the array; then access the Web GUI; and THEN run preclear -l it won't show the array disks.

The vast majority (in fact every one I've ever seen) of failures occur during the 1st cycle. If you're still getting increasing reallocated sectors, you'll see that with the results of the first cycle => THEN it's a good idea to run more [although I'd be inclined to simply RMA the drive in the case].

Just what I expected, given how good the SMART reports were. Both of your drives are fine.

The final SMART values look very good on both of the drives; but I agree you need to look at the preclear report to confirm that (a) all of the reallocation values are zero; and (b) there weren't any significant changes in the SMART data (it's unlikely there were, given the final values).

As I noted above, that's only true if AHCI is enabled. Not all systems have this enabled by default ... but it's simple to check (and change) in the BIOS.

Hot-swap is supported on any SATA-II or later system that supports AHCI, but ONLY if AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. I presume yours is ... but it wouldn't hurt to check. ... and despite technically supporting it, I've seen a fair number of systems it simply doesn't work well on.

No ... not while the value is 100. If the value starts to drop, then yes, it would be a bad sign. It's not even clear why it's listed as a "changed" parameter, since both the before and after values were 100 (which is what you want it to be).

Agree with WeeboTech ... if you're going to save them, save them in disk.cfg like the GUI does. If someone's got an "extra.cfg" file, then it's up to them to change the values if they want to. If you want to be "extra helpful", you could check for the presence of that file and remind them that they have it and that it overrides the values in disk.cfg => but let the knowledgeable user make that change. By the way, I don't see anywhere in the utility to tell it how strong you like your coffee !!